If I release my software as open source, then I can’t release as shareware, because somebody will just take the source, compile it, and offer it for free, and my income from the shareware version will disappear.

In my opinion open source will have a huge negative impact on the wages of the software developers in the long run. Open source is often released by enthusiasts who don’t care about making a living out of software.

For me, software development is fun, it’s my hobby, but it’s also my profession, I earn my living and I want to be able to continue to earn my living by developing software. So - I love developing software, but I also want to get paid for it. This is why I don’t release open source.

I hope to retire before open source changes the software development profession into a profession with very low wages and very few employed people.

My software is a portfolio management and stock scanning system and while there’s a potential to gain an advantage in the markets using it, like most software, it will take work and is no magic bullet. It’s a tool for traders just like a hammer is a tool for carpenters.

But something in subconsious tells me that I probably won’t sell as many copies with that response. So do I tell the customer that he could make millions or do I act like a parent and give the speech about how everything takes work, blah, blah….

Marketing is so much harder than software development.

If I am providing a good service why should I feel ashamed?

And this doesn’t just apply to…

Best regards from Chile

@ Dmitry: Thanks… this one’s already on my to do list for the site.

What I always do with your articles (from here, from dexterity.com) is copy them to MS Word and then print. Would you please be so nice to add “Print this page” or something like this to the website, so that we can print articles directly from browser?

Thanks!
-Dmitry Chestnykh

Thanks Steve. Which of Jay Abraham’s books should I start with?

The software started selling. I have developed a second version, but I had some serious doubts. To me the utility seemed worthless. I was thinking “What the hell am I doing? I’m selling a worthless utility! In fact it’s not a good program”.

Then some user feedback came, and I had the idea of asking users why they have bought my utility, what value it offered them, how can I improve it, etc.

The responses surprised me and made me see that the program was indeed valuable. It was just a toy to me, because I had lots of knowledge about how the computer works, but it was very useful and valuable to my users. So my doubts vanished, and I started work on version 3.

This is in fact a serious problem. Yes, there are lots and lots of ideas. A small percentage of these ideas work.

So what’s needed is not a lot of ideas, but to be able to find the ideas that work.

> Many cost nothing at all to implement.

… except your time, which is very valuable. Spend it on a marketing idea that works, and you’ll have a business. Spend it on all the marketing ideas you can find, and you’ll probably have a lot profit because most of the ideas won’t work.

This is why at my company we have 3 lists of ideas:

A. ideas we haven’t tried
B. ideas we have tried, and work
C. ideas we have tried, but don’t work

Some marketing ideas work or not depending on the season. You can do promotion X in the summer and get very little sales from it, or you can do it in the autumn and have a large boost of sales.

Important public events can also affect how your marketing is received by the public.

I don’t know if in your business you kept the A, B and C lists described above, but if you did, I would be very interested in your B and C lists.